At Roland Garros,
To understand the state of French tennis after this new 2023 version of Roland-Garros purge, no need for long speeches, at least not right away. This Friday, it was enough for us to look at the crestfallen head of the DTN Julien Escudé, when he appeared at a press conference to take stock of the disaster, to understand that the tomorrows that sing are not for now. But, unlike other years, when we were told that the new team at the helm of the federation was putting things in place, that we had to wait before shooting it, this time the tone has changed . If the usual plot is still there – it’s working, it’s progressing, it should end up paying off one day – we still note a hardening of the discourse. Even a beginning of friction with the players.
Take a look: After admitting from the outset that the tricolor’s record this year “is not good”, Nicolas Escudé went on to defend the FFT, without anyone attacking him on this point. “I don’t think we can make the federation responsible for everything either,” he said. That does not in any way mean that the federation does not assume its responsibilities, but we have put in place a lot of things over the past two years on the training of our players, on the way in which the France pole in Poitiers, the CNE. We all have one goal, that our players shine, but that’s not the case today. And somewhere the first penalized and the first responsible for these results are the players. “Unwittingly, the former Davis Cup winner has just played us a magnificent remake of the sketch of the Unknowns and their mythical “responsible, but not guilty”.
Abundantly repeated language elements
The DTN continued by taking the assistance to witness. “You know tennis well enough, if I were to ask you the question, ‘did you really expect a French boy to win Roland-Garros this year?’ “, he let go. Hit. But between a victory in the final and passing the second round, we believe that there is still an acceptable space in which to rush, right? When a colleague asked him what was missing to finally stop finding himself like every year in this same press room to take stock of the missing in the second round, Escudé began to laugh. Before starting: “Already, we don’t have a Frenchman who is seeded… It takes work, constant investment to have a ranking that allows you to be seeded. We should have more boys at least ranked in the 30s. What are they missing individually? I cannot answer you”.
And this one to put a layer on the athletes, first responsible for who happens to them: “Afterwards, it’s only individual projects, they are the ones who structure themselves, they who choose their coach, their staff, they who set a roadmap for achieving their goals. The message got through. And fundamentally, the observation made by Escudé is far from missing the mark – tennis is an individual sport and the results of recent years show that it is rarely the richest feds and/or the more involved who produce champions – but it is above all the form that raises questions. How will our athletes react to hearing the words of the DTN? Wait and see (and make the popcorn).
We would be curious to have the opinion of Corentin Moutet, who had already not particularly appreciated our question when we asked him about the sad record of the French, Wednesday evening, after his defeat against Taylor Fritz. “I have no opinion on this, I am not a journalist. I don’t give my opinion on others, he blurted out, a bit annoyed. I think everyone is doing their best. Whether the players lose in the first, second or third round, they all deserve respect. They are great athletes. It’s not given to everyone to play a Grand Slam. It’s super respectable, with a lot of effort since we were little. No matter the outcome, we all deserve respect. We must give credit to all athletes. Whether they win or lose is not what defines an athlete’s values and merit. »
Put the pack on the clay
Among the avenues mentioned to save the French tennis soldier, one caught our attention. Since what the people of France want – who only watch tennis once a year at the time of Roland-Garros – is a victory over the Parisian ocher, so much to put the package on this surface. Nevertheless, In the last newsin France only 16% of the courts used are clay, compared to 75% in Spain.
“We try to get our youngsters to play as much as possible outside as soon as the weather is nice. But even in the middle of winter, as soon as we can play outside, we play outside. And as much as possible on clay because you have to spend as much time as possible on this surface (to succeed), it’s an orientation that we have taken for two years already. It’s no secret that to be able to shine on a surface as specific as this, you have to spend a lot more time there. And today, our young people spend much more time there than in the past. »
Questioned by a Swiss colleague to find out if the FFT, one of the richest federations in the world, had perhaps not put all these little people too much in financial comfort from a very young age, Escudé admits that “c is a reflection that we can have”. “Have we helped our players too much? It’s a perpetual debate. We try to make them aware of what the high level is and the concessions that will have to be made, the investment that will require from them, whether human or financial, in order to be able to achieve their objective, he developed before returning again to his starting postulate. It’s not a federation that will make someone win a grand slam tournament. “We put this sentence in the warm in case the Fed wants to be lathered the day Arthur Son will succeed Yannick Noah.